


Expectation—is Contentment

by middlemarch



Category: Downton Abbey, Foyle's War
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Family, House Party, Marriage, Mechanics, Post-War, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 06:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11572416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: "A great pile," Sybbie had said. "Just home," George had remarked. The Foyles encounter Downton.





	Expectation—is Contentment

Andrew had thought Sam would be most excited by the dinner, the need to retire to the room they’d been given, their names carefully calligraphied on an ivory card in a clever piece of brass scrollwork on the door, to shrug off her cardigan and tweed skirt and dress for the Earl and Dowager Countess, to sit at the vanity with its slender fluted legs and mottled looking-glass showing its age and ask him to fasten the garnet necklace or do up the last few hooks on the borrowed evening gown, a few years old but more elegant than any a vicar’s daughter would ever have even looked at in a shop window. The dress was silk, artfully cut, the color of a ripe plum, and had been waiting in a tissue lined box with a note from Sybbie, all dash and darling, suggesting Sam would be doing her the favor by wearing it. He had seen the way his wife ran a gentle hand along the silk, the light in her hazel eyes. She had looked utterly winsome in it, the nape of her neck bared as she’d put up her hair with pins and not simply tied back in a scarf as she did when she attacked the dusting and prepared to beat the rugs; he had wanted to kiss her but had not, only let his fingers trace the line of her throat. If he had started to kiss her, he would not have wanted to stop and the bed was so near, the dinner gong so faint, they would have been dreadfully late and even George would have been hard put to excuse them. What Lady Mary would have said, Andrew did not want to imagine—the rapidity of her wit was matched by its sharpness and he knew they had not done enough to endear themselves to her, to keep her from humbling Sam with a look and a remark delivered as effortlessly as a rose shed a petal, as a thorn drew blood.

Andrew realized he was the one who had been most excited by the prospect of the dinner, of walking in with Sam on his arm, lovely and joyful, her delight welcome as the sun after rain, rain after drought, of grazing her hand with his when they reached for the heavy silver, of seeing the amusement in George’s eyes, the approval in the Dowager Countess’s. George knew he didn’t ride and didn’t hold it against him, they would be pleasantly tired from a long walk around the grounds, and the drinks would be poured with a lavish hand, the ice clinking and chinking the crystal of the glass. He and Sam didn’t belong in a place like this, Downton far too luxurious even in the beginning of a slow decline for the likes of them, the Foyles, a vicar’s daughter and detective’s son, but to visit was a pleasure Andrew could not have imagined when he was still flying, when the sky curved like a shell, stars broke the night like moths rending cloth. He had wanted only to live then, to fly and then to come back to the earth and feel it under his feet the way he had never felt a cloud; he had wanted to clap his hand on Rex’s back, to laugh when George smiled, to drink his pint of bitter and feel like he might be any man, not Andrew Foyle. George understood and his cousin Sybbie somehow, but Sam didn’t, not entirely and he didn’t want her to. He didn’t want her to understand him yet as he didn’t understand her in every way. He had fallen in love first with her curiosity and he liked how she made him curious in turn, even as he imagined how her insatiable desire to know must have bedeviled his father.

His father would not have been surprised, he thought, not as he had been; his father would have recognized her grin when Sybbie took her arm in her own and announced,

“I’ve an idea, humor me, won’t you?” walking off with Sam as if they were two Girl Guides ready for an adventure and he the loyal hound trailing behind. His father would have nodded just a little when Sybbie brought them to the outbuilding that served as a garage and opened the doors to reveal her father and George’s stepfather, both in open collared shirts with sleeves rolled up, the engine of a great black behemoth of a vehicle their entire focus until Sybbie shoved Sam forward with the announcement,

“I’ve brought another mechanic along so you’ll be in time for dinner tonight. Aunt Mary won’t take kindly to sitting down late and mind you scrub your hands, Da. Sam’s the only one who can get away with evening gloves.”

Andrew had opened his mouth to ask Sam if it was what she wanted, she needn’t feel obligated but in that moment, Sam was standing besides Sybbie’s father and reaching for the torque wrench in his hand while Henry Talbot stepped back to let her in as she explained, “I see what you’ve done but not what you meant to do— did you want her to simply have more horsepower, or was it a repair gone awry, for this’ll never do, you both must know that, clear as day.” 

“There’s a scarf in the pocket of the mac, so you can tie your hair back,” Sybbie’d called out, having taken Andrew by the crook of his elbow and gesturing that they walk out, toward the little pavilion that overlooked the field George had told him they used as a cricket pitch. Sam had glanced up, a smudge of engine grease across her cheekbone already, and had given Andrew the most brilliant, beaming smile; Sybbie’s father had grinned merrily and Henry Talbot had raised an eyebrow and nodded smartly in Andrew’s direction before turning back to Sam, crouching beside her and the body of the automobile.

“Da won’t let her be late for dinner, not even too late to dress. And even if he did, he’s a way with Aunt Mary. There’s a new pot of cold cream in the bath for her, it takes off the grease beautifully, and here we are, George, just as I promised,” Sybbie said, finishing just as they arrived before Andrew’s old comrade, looking completely the part of the country aristocracy in his worn tweeds and the dog’s lead held lightly in his hand, the Earl Andrew had never been able to believe in until they’d met him at the massive front door of his estate. And then he was just George again, shaking his head at his cousin’s cheek, happier than Andrew had remembered him ever appearing.

“I’m going to go back, I said I’d wait for Marigold in the library and I expect Hugo is sulking over our chess game,” Sybbie had declared blithely and Andrew thought he hadn’t known how much he ought to look forward to the dinner, his wife lovely in borrowed finery, George’s mother presiding over them all like the Queen of the North, the anticipated squabbling of George’s young brother and sisters and Sybbie arranging it all, unwilling to be thanked except by the others’ wordless joy.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a sort of pleasant excursion into the universe where Andrew and George were in the same squadron and George and Sybbie have already been to tea at Sam and Andrew's flat in Oxford.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson. I imagine that Mary and Henry have had several more children, a set a twins and another child, of whom Hugo is one.


End file.
